In Situ One-Pot Synthesis of C-Decorated and Cl-Doped Sea-Urchin-like Rutile Titanium Dioxide with Highly Efficient Visible-Light Photocatalytic Activity

Hongmiao Huang; Tongtong Zhang; Xiunan Cai; Zhanjing Guo; Songlin Fan; Yanjuan Zhang; Cuiwu Lin; Tao Gan; Huayu Hu; Zuqiang Huang

doi:10.1021/acsami.1c17081

In Situ One-Pot Synthesis of C-Decorated and Cl-Doped Sea-Urchin-like Rutile Titanium Dioxide with Highly Efficient Visible-Light Photocatalytic Activity

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2021 Dec 22;13(50):60337-60350. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c17081. Epub 2021 Dec 10.

Authors

Hongmiao Huang^{1

2}, Tongtong Zhang¹, Xiunan Cai¹, Zhanjing Guo², Songlin Fan¹, Yanjuan Zhang¹, Cuiwu Lin¹, Tao Gan¹, Huayu Hu¹, Zuqiang Huang¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, China.
² School of Pharmacy, Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine, Nanning, Guangxi 530200, China.

PMID: 34889099
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c17081

Abstract

Titanium dioxide (TiO₂) that offers high light-harvesting capacity and efficient charge separation holds great promise in photocatalysis. In this work, an in situ one-pot hydrothermal synthesis was explored to prepare a C-decorated and Cl-doped sea-urchin-like rutile TiO₂ (Cl-TiO₂/C). The growth of sea-urchin-like 3D hierarchical nanostructures was governed by a mechanism of nucleation and nuclei growth-dissolution-recrystallization growth from time-dependent morphology evolution. The crystal morphology and the content of Cl and C could be controlled by the volume ratio of HCl to TBOT. Systematic studies indicated that the 0.4Cl-TiO₂/C sample (the volume ratio of HCl to TBOT was 0.4) exhibited the highest visible-light photocatalytic activity for the degradation of rhodamine B, with kinetic rate constant (k) of 0.0221 min^-1, being 6.5 and 3.75 times higher than that of TiO₂ and Cl-TiO₂. The enhanced photocatalytic performance could be attributed to the high charge separation and transfer efficiency induced by Cl-doping and C decoration and the excellent light-harvesting capacity caused by its sea-urchin-like nanostructure. Moreover, the 0.4Cl-TiO₂/C sample exhibited good reusability and excellent structural stability for five cycles. This facile one-pot approach provides new insight for the preparation of a TiO₂-based photocatalyst with excellent photocatalytic performance for potential application in practical wastewater treatment.

Keywords: carbon decorating; chlorine doping; one-step hydrothermal synthesis; photocatalytic degradation; sea-urchin-like TiO2.